Zooming Into Galaxy Cluster Abell 315

A new wide-field image released on May 5, 2010 by ESO displays many thousands of distant galaxies, and more particularly a large group belonging to the massive galaxy cluster known as Abell 315. As crowded as it may appear, this assembly of galaxies is only the proverbial “tip of the iceberg,” as Abell 315 – like most galaxy clusters – is dominated by dark matter. The huge mass of this cluster deflects light from background galaxies, distorting their observed shapes slightly.

When looking at the sky with the unaided eye, we mostly only see stars within our Milky Way galaxy and some of its closest neighbors. More distant galaxies are just too faint to be perceived by the human eye, but if we could see them, they would literally cover the sky. This new image released by ESO is both a wide-field and long-exposure one, and reveals thousands of galaxies crowding an area on the sky roughly as large as the full Moon.

Source: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1019a/

Dance for Joy

What are these humans doing? Dancing. Many humans on Earth exhibit periods of happiness, and one method of displaying happiness is dancing. Happiness and dancing transcend political boundaries and occur in practically every human society. Above, Matt Harding traveled through many nations on Earth, started dancing, and filmed the result. The video is perhaps a dramatic example that humans from all over planet Earth feel a common bond as part of a single species. Happiness is frequently contagious — few people are able to watch the video without smiling.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

This video instantly filled my heart with joy and reduced me to tears. It’s so easy to forget that before we’re any of the lables we give ourselves (gay, straight, American, Canadian, poor, rich, white or black) we’re all humans. The language barrier can always be overcome with simple human emotions like this video demonstrates: joy